Wayne Leupold Editions provides organists with a wide offering of publications, including original compositions for organ, transcriptions, and teaching materials. Since its founding in 1989, this publishing firm has given special attention to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century organ music that has previously been difficult to obtain. The organ works of American composers John Knowles Paine (1839-1906), Arthur Foote (1853-1937), and Horatio Parker (1863-1919) represent some of the most important compositions from this neglected repertory.

Paine was the first of these three Americans to compose for the organ. His musical studies in Berlin from 1858 to 1861 coincided with a major revival in Germany of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The influence of the great baroque master can be seen in Paine's youthful compositions from the 1860s. After returning to the United States, Paine became widely acclaimed as a brilliant recitalist, performing throughout the Boston area and serving as organist at Harvard University's Appleton Chapel for several decades. While in the latter position, he also taught music courses at the university and, in 1875, became a full professor at Harvard, one of the first professorships of music at an American university. Following this major advancement in his career, Paine ceased to compose works for keyboard instruments, devoting his time instead to choral, vocal, and chamber music as well as works for the stage. All of his extant music for organ dates from the 1860s, the earliest period of his composing career. Only six of these compositions were published during his lifetime, and other works known to have been composed are lost.

As a student at Harvard during the early 1870s, Foote studied counterpoint and fugue with Paine. In 1875, Foote received an M.A. degree in music from Harvard, the first one to be awarded by an American university. Foote served as a church organist in the Boston area from 1876 until 1910. A prolific composer for over forty years, he wrote most of his organ works during the years 1900 to 1915--the mature phase of his career, and a period during which he was one of the best-known and admired composers in the United States. Although Paine, his teacher, composed organ works in larger forms more suitable for the recital repertory, Foote wrote, for the most part, in shorter forms intended primarily for church services. All of his organ music was published during his lifetime. …

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